'I'm very proud of the old girl'
John Harrison: “And there was this beautiful cruiser Belfast, not HMS, just Belfast. I introduced myself to the skipper that was there, and he said, “oh, you're Harrison.” I said, “that's right, Sir.” He said, “you’re the ordnance artificer, you are responsible only to the guns, sights, directors, nothing else, is that understood?” Listen. I mean, what else can you say? When I first joined the Belfast, it was like going into a house which had just been built, renovated, everything was sparkling new and you were just like, well heaven to a gunnery man, which I was. It was a responsible job because when you come to think of it, that's the only thing that, that, this, these ships are for carrying guns around and when they’re wanted, those guns had got to be perfect. It was our job to make them perfect. I was in charge of A-turret, that's the one right at the front. I thought, ‘that’s very nice, if anything happens, that's going to be terribly difficult to get out in the dark’. And it was. I was down in my working area suddenly my head went into my shoulders; I could feel it and the deck bounced about a foot. I thought ‘well, that’s not normal’. The bouncing gradually faded away and it all went very, very quiet and I came out in the top and I opened the hatch and water pouring on our head. I thought ‘oh my god, we’ve sunk’. Well, it turned out that there was a fire hose which had been distorted by the blast and was directed straight onto his hatch, which I was coming out of. We weren't sinking at all. But we realised that that, that, there had been an awful lot of damage. We were towed back to Rosyth and if we hadn't been an all welded ship, we would have sunk because the welding was torn apart, but it held. So, there's great credit to the Welders of Belfast. I’ve seen the Belfast when it was not commissioned, and I followed its history right the way through and I'm very proud of the old girl. There’s just something about some ships you love as soon as you go on. From the moment I went on it when it was just ordinary, an ordinary ship called the Belfast, there was something. I don't know what it is. But it was, it’s there, you can feel it. And I felt it, it was lovely.”
John Harrison was a Petty Officer Ordnance Artificer with the Royal Navy when he joined HMS Belfast in 1939. He served in the ship during the early months of her service off the coast of Great Britain and the Atlantic. He was on board when the ship hit a magnetic mine in the Firth of Forth.
The damage to the ship was so severe that she was out of action for three years. John remained in the navy but did not return to serve in HMS Belfast during the war.